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Mr. TIFF - An Oral History of a Format · Never Post

0:17
Nathan Carlson: Oh, does... I mean, can we share that? Is that
0:19
okay to share that little anecdote? Yeah. I'd like
0:23
Hans Buetow: to introduce you to Nathan Carlson talking on his
0:26
podcast, Inquisitive Pontification.
0:29
Speaker 3: So we were we were all we were all... Oh gosh. It's
0:32
hard to even start.
0:33
Hans Buetow: Nathan's talking with his cousins, Bethany, Kim,
0:36
and Kristen and they're all talking about their dad, who is
0:40
Nathan's uncle. His name is Steven Carlson. And they're
0:43
talking about his last day in the early summer of twenty
0:46
twenty five.
0:47
Speaker 3: He was passing away, we were all there with him. And
0:52
we were Kristen and Bee and I were telling stories. We were
0:56
bantering back and forth and and dad couldn't really speak at
0:59
that point or hadn't spoken for at least a day.
1:02
Hans Buetow: Not everyone gets to be surrounded by loved ones
1:06
at the end And not everyone gets a chance to reflect on a life
1:11
lived.
1:12
Speaker 3: I can't look at any of your faces. Go away. And so
1:20
we were just telling stories and kind of, like, teasing and
1:22
joking. And when you're with someone who's passing away, you
1:25
know, there's, like, laughter and tears
1:27
Nathan Carlson: Mhmm.
1:27
Speaker 3: At the same time. You know? So, anyways, we were we
1:32
were all just telling these cute stories, funny stories, stories
1:36
about him and what his conquests were with work, a lot of those
1:39
stories, and a lot of details we were completely messing up. And
1:43
so we were like, dad, I'm so sorry. I know it's probably just
1:46
making you feel so crazy that we're just messing up all the
1:50
data and the details and...
1:51
But, you know, we're just so proud of you. And so it's, like,
1:54
a very tender, like, teasing session. And finally... And you
1:57
could tell... All of a sudden, you could tell he was, like,
1:59
working on from the depths of the ocean, like, pulling a word
2:03
up.
2:03
And it was like, oh my gosh. He's gonna say something. We
2:07
stopped for a second, and he pulled a word out, and it was
2:10
wow. It was like, wow. And it felt like that in that one
2:16
single word, I mean, it meant...
2:20
Well...
2:25
Hans Buetow: Also in the room that day was Peg, the girl's
2:27
mother and Steven's ex wife.
2:30
Peg: The week that he was with all of us and and going through
2:33
the last week of his life, prior to that for many many months and
2:38
years, he really started to doubt how much he had
2:40
accomplished in the world and he was really just... He would
2:45
express, you know, I don't I don't know if I did anything
2:48
worth it. And we'd always be like, what are you what are you
2:50
talking about? And I'd always say, you're mister Tif. Don't...
2:53
You know, and he'd he'd kind of discredit all that.
2:56
Nathan Carlson: So So as the girls all sat there on his on
3:00
his deathbed telling him all the things he had done, I
3:05
interpreted his wow as, thank you. I think he
3:10
Peg: finally was was admitting and and living into his whole
3:14
big life that had gotten really hard at the... For for many
3:17
years. But he heard you guys, and he said, wow. Yeah.
3:23
Nathan Carlson: Yeah.
3:25
Speaker 3: And that was his last word.
3:30
Hans Buetow: This is actually a happy story. Steven was a dad
3:34
and a husband and an uncle. And also, Steven was a software
3:39
engineer who built one of the great digital file formats, the
3:43
TIFF. What is a TIFF? You've probably seen a TIFF as a format
3:47
option on a drop down when you go to save an image file, but
3:51
maybe you weren't sure what it was.
3:52
Don't worry, we're gonna get to that. But for now, it's the
3:56
summer of twenty twenty five and Steven has just died. We were
4:00
all encouraged to share memories.
4:03
Nathan Carlson: And a grieving family is doing the thing that
4:05
grieving families do, they're sharing stories to honor and
4:08
remember who has passed. What I had shared is as a boy, when
4:15
computers were becoming more of a thing, my dad was very
4:19
interested and so we got
4:20
Hans Buetow: a Packard Bell. Steve was the oldest. Nathan's
4:24
dad is the second oldest. And folks, this is a computer
4:28
family.
4:29
Nathan Carlson: My family was the first family to have a PC
4:34
among my friend group. So I was playing Jazz the Jackrabbit and
4:38
Doom, you know, when we got our Sound Blaster, you you know,
4:43
speakers. Yeah. My parents got me Tie Fighter and I had a
4:48
joystick and I I remember that. I would close my eyes after
4:52
playing and I would see the stars like moving, you know Yes.
4:56
In my eyes because I was playing hours.
4:59
Speaker 3: We would play... Kristen and I would play Lode
5:01
Runner and Typing Tutor. Because once we had used up our allowed
5:07
amount of time for Nintendo, we were allowed to have as much
5:10
computer time as they wanted, so just typing tutor. Yes. So I
5:15
would type for hours just it was a game.
5:17
Yeah. We typed early. Yeah. We learned how to type early and
5:19
then and we got got fast.
5:22
Nathan Carlson: I remember seeing Steve's study or lab, if
5:27
you will, like, with all these Mac computers. They were...
5:30
Their whole family was Mac, you know. And just like, I was like,
5:36
cool.
5:36
Speaker 6: We'd go down, yeah, into the basement and he'd be
5:39
sitting on his his computer with his headphones on and it would
5:43
take many many calls to get his attention because he was so
5:46
focused on whatever he was doing on the computer. So we'd be
5:50
like, dad, dad, dad. It would take like a while. And then this
5:56
is the famous story we all still talk about. He turns around and
5:59
he goes, just like like, it's disturbing me a little bit right
6:05
now.
6:06
I'm gonna have to like get back into whatever I was into in my
6:08
head.
6:09
Hans Buetow: There was a good chance in those moments that
6:11
Steven was working on something for Aldis, which is where he was
6:15
employed. A small software company that eventually merged
6:19
with Adobe. Even as a teen, I knew Yeah.
6:23
Nathan Carlson: That work... Someone working for Adobe,
6:25
that's big time. That's really cool. And I
6:27
Hans Buetow: would brag about that with my friends. Yeah. I
6:30
have an uncle that works for Adobe. What Steven actually did
6:35
for Aldous and Adobe was a little murkier to the family
6:39
though.
6:40
Nathan Carlson: There was this family understanding of he
6:47
either created the TIFF file or helped make it.
6:51
Hans Buetow: Okay.
6:51
Nathan Carlson: But he's wasn't ever a breaker.
6:53
Speaker 3: Whenever you would ask him like, what what project
6:56
are you working on or what did you do today? He'll just say,
6:59
oh, I was fixing bugs. Like, he's just the same answer, like,
7:03
fixing
7:03
Nathan Carlson: Yeah.
7:04
Speaker 3: Some more bugs.
7:08
Hans Buetow: It turns out Steven was doing a lot more than that.
7:12
Aldis's big product was called PageMaker, and PageMaker was one
7:15
of the first pieces of desktop publishing software.
7:19
Nathan Carlson: It was the first, like, foray into home
7:25
publishing. But Aldis realized there was a big problem when it
7:28
launched in 1985. Every scanner and printing company, the
7:36
hardware, they all had their own proprietary file formats. And so
7:43
all this was like, okay. We want our customers who are buying our
7:49
software to be able to use all these hardware because they're
7:53
all...
7:53
They all have different solutions, different price
7:55
points, different strengths and weaknesses, whatever. But it's a
7:59
nightmare to program and make it work for all of these different
8:05
file formats. And so I I remember my dad was explaining
8:09
it to me when I was a little bit older and understanding it. He's
8:12
like, Steve was basically given the project to go talk to all of
8:17
these different companies that made these scanners and printers
8:21
of okay. What what file format are you you use...
8:26
You using and can I see like the innards of it? I want... I need
8:32
to I need to see the programming language and pick the best one
8:39
or make a
8:40
Hans Buetow: new one. We already know how this goes. Steven
8:44
decides that he needs something more robust, more flexible than
8:49
any of the existing proprietary forms that he sees out there in
8:52
the market. What he needs has to be crisp at all sizes. So Steven
8:57
needs to make it lossless.
8:59
This means perfect maintenance of quality even when you open
9:03
and close the file a whole bunch of times which degrades other
9:07
digital files. In order to play nice and work with all the
9:13
different scanner and imaging devices, Steven also needed to
9:16
make it adaptable. So, he built in a bunch of layering
9:20
capabilities to the TIFF. So the image can have inside of it a
9:25
whole bunch of context. It was mostly intended for color depth
9:28
resolution, whatever was needed to be as simple or as complex to
9:33
quote take advantage of the varying capabilities of the
9:37
smallest or biggest machines.
9:40
And lastly, he needed to make it free and community owned.
9:43
Otherwise, all the other businesses that they need to get
9:47
on board were gonna be a really hard sell to adopt it.
9:50
Nathan Carlson: I just like the idea of him being in the room
9:53
with all these different big wigs at these different
9:55
companies of like, so we're gonna make this TIFF file, we're
9:58
gonna need them open source, it's not gonna be proprietary,
10:01
we want you to support it, and here's how you support it,
10:03
here's how you implement it in
10:05
Hans Buetow: your operating systems. Remember, Steven's a
10:08
humble guy, and despite his family making him a t shirt
10:13
literally that says, mister TIFF on it. The details of the TIFF
10:17
are a little bit fuzzy for everyone.
10:24
Nathan Carlson: We just kind of know this in our family. Yeah.
10:27
But like, let let's put some teeth to that Mhmm. Belief, that
10:32
story. Was he truly the architect or was there a team
10:37
effort?
10:37
And if the... And if so, what what did that look like? What is
10:40
the oral history of creating this file and how ubiquitous is
10:47
this file?
10:48
Hans Buetow: And there's one more thing that Nathan wants.
10:51
Nathan Carlson: The Wikipedia entry, at the time when I looked
10:54
at it, his name was not mentioned. It should his name be
10:59
on the Wikipedia entry.
11:01
Hans Buetow: So he's got the curiosity.
11:03
Nathan Carlson: I have a teeny tiny little podcast. I could I
11:06
could interview people, whatever. I'd record some of
11:08
this. All he needs now is people to talk to. So that's when I
11:12
decided to post.
11:14
Hans Buetow: So he goes to Reddit, the friendliest place he
11:17
knows on the internet.
11:18
Nathan Carlson: Hello. I'm posting this as a little bit of
11:21
a research project. My uncle is quote mister tiff, the guy who
11:25
created the tiff file. There's a lot of the backstory that I'm
11:28
trying to gather.
11:29
Hans Buetow: This is where I enter this story. I was perusing
11:34
as I am want to do the archive subreddit which despite starting
11:39
on the photoshop subreddit, Nathan had been encouraged as
11:43
responses rolled in to start to cross post. And responses were
11:49
coming in. I remember seeing his initial post, which was so
11:54
earnest and so lovely, and thinking, oh, that's really
11:57
cool. And then I clicked in and I started to see how people were
12:04
replying to him.
12:05
And folks, people use the TIFF. People use the TIFF.
12:13
Nathan Carlson: So thanks for sharing about your uncle. He had
12:15
a huge impact on the whole world. Okay. Thanks. Wow.
12:21
Wow. You know? Okay.
12:22
Hans Buetow: Let's kick it off right.
12:23
Nathan Carlson: Right. So...
12:24
Hans Buetow: Nathan and I picked out some of our favorites to
12:26
read and collected some from others.
12:28
Nathan Carlson: It's a little hard to put into words exactly
12:31
how we use TIFFs in my government archive. It's kind of
12:34
like asking how you use your lungs to breathe. What else am I
12:39
gonna use? My liver? If I need a good quality image format that
12:43
will remain stable and lossless for years, of course, it's a
12:47
TIFF.
12:48
Speaker 7: I worked for fifteen years at a small town weekly
12:51
newspaper, doing graphic design and layout using Adobe Photoshop
12:55
and QuarkXPress. The TIFF file was the most reliable image
13:00
format to pass back and forth between computers, edit multiple
13:03
times, and still maintain its data integrity. I don't think
13:07
I've ever encountered a corrupt TIFF file.
13:10
Nathan Carlson: I used it last night for saving a printing
13:12
Photoshops for an art show.
13:14
Hans Buetow: I work as a vulnerability assessment
13:16
contractor.
13:17
Nathan Carlson: Oh, man.
13:18
Hans Buetow: Someone that helps communities understand how the
13:20
things they care about might be harmed by different hazards and
13:22
phenomena and what they can do to protect them. Every time I
13:25
start a project, I put together a series of spatial datasets
13:29
that serve as a fundamental basis for every step of the
13:32
analysis and cooperative learning effort.
13:35
Nathan Carlson: TIFF is basically the archival quality
13:39
format for long term digital preservation of still images.
13:43
Speaker 8: For librarians, particularly research repository
13:45
librarians like myself, TIFF's one of the primary file formats
13:48
recommended by the US Library of Congress for preservation.
13:52
Nathan Carlson: Every archive I have worked with, worked in or
13:56
know people who work in use TIFF as their preferred archival
14:00
format.
14:01
Hans Buetow: I'm not an archivist, but a picture framer.
14:03
Yeah. We work in corporate framing and use TIFF for the
14:06
images we print to hang. We print pretty large, and we need
14:10
the files to still look nice. The images end up in hospitals
14:14
all over the world.
14:16
Perhaps while your uncle was ill, he and his family were in a
14:19
hospital with images like this.
14:22
Nathan Carlson: That's cool.
14:23
Speaker 8: TIFF's rich metadata tagging options let us tag the
14:26
image with contextual description benefits users now
14:29
and those that might find these images in the far future, which
14:33
is a description something I think we should be appreciating
14:35
TIFFs for.
14:37
Hans Buetow: So when there's a big lawsuit, information that
14:39
goes through discovery is often entirely on hard drives that
14:42
converted info TIFF and extracted texts.
14:45
Nathan Carlson: I work in a government law library. My staff
14:48
and I scan microfilm, microfiche to TIFF to scan old legislation
14:55
to a server so that we can edit it in Adobe and digitize it for
14:59
others to use more easily. Works way better than any other file
15:04
type. They're used in many commercial microscopes from
15:08
fluorescent microscopy to microbiology to scanning
15:11
electron microscopes for nanotech circuit design and
15:15
verification. There was one comment of like, we use it in in
15:19
movie editing or something.
15:20
I'm like, what?
15:24
Hans Buetow: In the hundreds of comments that Nathan received,
15:27
the variety of uses of TIFF was exceeded, in my opinion, only by
15:31
the affection that was displayed by all the users. The things
15:36
that people put the TIFF to use for was to me incredible.
15:41
Nathan, for his part, started to gather all these comments and
15:44
then started to coordinate with people to interview them on his
15:48
podcast to learn more about the TIFF. One of the first
15:51
interviews that Nathan did was a data scientist named Trevor, who
15:54
was using the TIFF to find the projected level of fire, floods,
15:59
and droughts in an area given the historical data. He shared
16:05
Nathan Carlson: a screen and he showed me that he could click a
16:08
button using the TIFF file, the GeoTIFF file. And he could say
16:13
these colors, these dots right here, that's one specific
16:18
species of tree. And then just the... This button shows me all
16:23
the different trees in this area and how heavily populated the
16:26
trees or whatever. This use of
16:28
Hans Buetow: a TIFF is called GeoTIFF and it's a subset of the
16:31
TIFF experience that is used by folks who work in GIS.
16:35
Donavan Cameron: It's a geographic information systems.
16:38
Hans Buetow: This is Donovan, another person that Nathan
16:40
interviewed who also works in GeoTIFF.
16:43
Donavan Cameron: I'm from So to First Nations. It's, one of the
16:46
treaty eight nations, and, I've worked with GIS exclusively with
16:50
First Nations doing a lot of, oral history interviews and
16:53
stuff like that, building GIS systems, how to implement them.
16:58
Hans Buetow: The TIFF format allows GeoTIFs and GIS work to
17:03
embed the context of georeferencing information
17:06
directly into the file.
17:08
Donavan Cameron: And it's kind of thought of conceptually as
17:10
maybe five components where it involves working with data,
17:15
whether you're collecting it, whether you're storing it,
17:19
whether you're clearing it, asking questions about the data,
17:22
getting subsets, whether you start to do analysis with it.
17:25
And then finally, there's a fifth major component that is
17:27
visualization. So if you think of GIS and those components,
17:31
it's more than just map making. It's working with data that has
17:35
some type of spatial phenomena.
17:37
Hans Buetow: Donovan had left a comment on one of the Reddit
17:40
posts.
17:40
Nathan Carlson: These were from scanned oral history maps,
17:44
integral to cultural heritage and preservation, land use
17:49
management, wildlife and environmental management,
17:53
negotiations, research, economics, truth and
17:58
reconciliation, treaty interpretation, litigation,
18:03
mitigation, etcetera. It was so immeasurable. So after the
18:08
break, we're gonna hear an edited excerpt of Nathan's
18:11
interview with him about the way that a file format can change
18:15
and ultimately reflect a worldview.
18:49
Donavan Cameron: Glad to be here. So my name is, and my
18:54
family's name is. And I'm also known as Donovan Cameron. And
18:59
I'm calling today from the Treaty 8 territory in Northern
19:03
BC, Canada. Treaty 8 covers Northern Alberta, parts of
19:08
Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories.
19:10
It's a fairly large territory, about just over 840,000 or
19:14
870,000 square kilometers.
19:17
Nathan Carlson: Cool. Thank you. And so how did you see my post
19:23
on Reddit?
19:25
Donavan Cameron: Yeah. That was Yeah. It was quite interesting.
19:27
Definitely caught my attention. I frequent a lot of GIS subs.
19:31
What I noticed about your post was that it mentioned TIFF and
19:35
also some type of legacy to your uncle as well, which was was
19:39
also interesting. So I've had a very strong personal touch,
19:42
which is something we we don't really get to see too much, you
19:46
know, especially as we use these technologies. The faces behind
19:49
them, the stories is something that I didn't really get to
19:52
touch, and I I was really excited because it was inviting,
19:55
you know, asking us to share our stories and our experiences.
19:58
Nobody really asked those kind of questions. You know?
20:01
So, again, I was really happy to share that because a lot of our
20:05
work happens in the background just like a lot of the work your
20:07
uncle did. You know, it's in the fine print. Yeah. GIS, we make a
20:11
lot of maps, but we we don't really put our names on them, so
20:14
to speak. Right?
20:17
I started in in early two thousand six. At the time, there
20:21
were all these new technologies coming out like Google Maps,
20:24
Google Earth was there. But GIS, I guess, is the underlying
20:28
technologies that really build those types of systems. Right?
20:31
It's a geographic information systems.
20:35
My first real use of it was to help the treaty nations really
20:40
look at how they wanted to be engaged with by... Through
20:43
government. So maybe a negotiation piece and also a
20:47
treaty implementation piece. It's interesting because a lot
20:51
of these... I don't know if you're familiar with the number
20:53
of treaties in Canada.
20:54
These are specific set of treaties, one to 11. And they
20:58
were negotiated between the First Nations and the British
21:02
Crown. And then eventually, as Canada became, like, a
21:06
constitutional monarchy, I guess, so to speak, they had to
21:09
adopt those treaties. So the honor of the crown was passed on
21:12
to Canada as if they wanted to legislate and govern themselves.
21:16
They also had to honor these treaties that was made with
21:18
these other nations, and one of them was mine.
21:21
One of the... These First Nations. Right? So... But but,
21:24
anyways, the mapping GIS piece was a new technology for us
21:27
First Nations when I was really getting into it around that
21:30
time.
21:30
We had been using it for a few years in the nineties, the
21:33
eighties, but not really owning it in terms of get... Building
21:37
our own capacity, our own people, our other expertise, or
21:40
using it in house. It would have been done through research
21:42
consultants. We probably saw our maps and books and different
21:45
stories, but nothing that we really owned.
21:47
Nathan Carlson: That someone else made. Yeah.
21:49
Donavan Cameron: Yeah. And for the first time, I got to make a
21:52
map from First Nations, a, and I brought it into this room. K.
21:55
And I was just a young guy out of high school. Hit...
21:57
They're like, yeah. Take this map downstairs. It was just a
21:59
boundary. There were all these chiefs and leaders sitting in
22:02
this room, and there were maps for about these five or six
22:07
nations. And each nation had drawn up boundaries where they
22:09
wanted to be consulted on when it came to industrial activity,
22:13
specifically oil and gas.
22:15
The reactions on the people's faces was something I'd never
22:18
really seen before. I'd never seen how effective, how powerful
22:21
this could be just simply making a map Yeah. And how strong the
22:25
statement it could make. And the type of discussion it opened up
22:30
was truly incredible. And it led to, you know, further
22:33
negotiations, further consultations.
22:35
But but as treaty nations, they were able to do something unique
22:39
that they couldn't do before. A lot of First Nations mapping was
22:43
done up in the North in the Arctic through the Arctic claims
22:46
process. Canada was in the seventies. They were trying to
22:50
do this Arctic sovereignty thing, but Canada didn't really
22:53
have a lot of infrastructure. What could Canada do to give
22:56
strong Arctic claim?
22:58
Well, they learned that in the seventies, they needed to assert
23:02
that claim through the North Indigenous populations up there,
23:05
like the Inuit and and and those nations. So they did this Arctic
23:10
claim process where they invited those nations to assert
23:13
themselves, try to draw out their territories, new oral
23:16
history mapping, new hunting, fishing, all these activities
23:19
they did on the land, their stories, and sacred sites. And
23:22
by mapping those sites, they could prove where their title
23:25
existed. And then Canada could use that to say, hey. Look.
23:28
Our First Nations are up there as well, and our indigenous
23:31
population, that's out there. That's our area. Right? So...
23:34
But in treaty territory, it's a little different.
23:36
When you have established treaties, you don't need to
23:39
prove where your existence is. Right? The treaty already
23:42
establishes where those rights exist. So it's more about
23:46
implementing protection and conservation. So using the
23:49
technology in that aspect changes things.
23:52
And and that's where, specifically for TIF, was
23:56
interesting because a lot of our beginnings in GIS, especially in
24:00
First Nations communities, begins with a lot of oral
24:02
history and trying to transfer that oral history into some type
24:06
of format that is, you know, secure, interchangeable, usable,
24:11
and and and and freely available as well. Right? And TIF really
24:16
fit the mark. It's versatility. Right?
24:20
So you'll see a lot of oral history happening with with
24:22
elders, land users sitting in front of devices they're not
24:26
familiar with, such as a computer Sure. Or even a
24:28
tabletop map. Maps in themselves are a technology as well. You...
24:33
You'll see the beginning stages of maybe a hard copy into a
24:35
digital copy.
24:36
When you're scanning these in, a lot of times you're outputting a
24:39
TIFF. Mhmm. And and then the journey just begins there. And
24:42
that's where it get get... Starts to get really
24:44
interesting.
24:44
Right? Because the TIFF was just a regular image. Right? Like,
24:49
how is it a map? Where does it go from here?
24:51
And then where's more information? And what can you do
24:53
with this? Right? And and then you start to attach geospatial
24:58
information to a TIFF and it becomes a GeoTIFF. Or you don't
25:01
even have to do that.
25:02
You can attach a GROW file, like a TIFF, a TFW, where your
25:06
geospatial information is stored in a text file. So... And then
25:09
they can reference each other. Like, it was such a beautiful
25:11
format to work with and to be able... Some of those some some
25:15
of those same files that I have used almost twenty years ago are
25:19
still here today being used by people as well.
25:22
I can't say that for a lot of other formats, either
25:24
proprietary ones that become expensive or unwieldy. So, yeah,
25:29
it was... I find GIS and TIF really good starting points for
25:33
a lot of nations and without really realizing it, without
25:36
giving it the credit it really deserves for sure. TIF was a a
25:40
very strong even training ground for me technically. For GIS, we
25:44
work with a lot of data, and it takes a lot to work with data to
25:48
look at it beyond the image, right, so to speak.
25:50
Mhmm. So how do we dig into the binary side of it? What does it
25:54
look like, and what does the data really mean? What are these
25:56
scales, one to two fifty five? Like, what's zero and one, and
26:00
why is it like that?
26:01
And it really tested me and allowed me to even reach out to
26:07
specialists within these fields and really learn about data
26:09
because of all the things that TIP could do, all the things you
26:12
could embed in it, all the things that you could do with
26:15
it. It became like the the butter in between all of this
26:18
Swiss army knife of data formats. Right? If you didn't
26:21
have a stored in TIFF, you probably weren't doing much.
26:23
Like, that's where you always started.
26:24
Like, you could store stuff there with lossless compression,
26:27
which was so powerful. You can compress your data without
26:30
losing any information. There aren't too many open formats
26:34
that let you do that.
26:38
Nathan Carlson: Can you share more about... You painted a very
26:42
amazing picture of you, you know, bringing that map and
26:47
seeing those people. I'm reminded... I took a class in in
26:50
college about basically the power of maps. But you're kind
26:55
of trying to prove this oral history to people that need to
26:59
see it.
27:00
Am I getting that right? Mhmm.
27:02
Donavan Cameron: For sure. There's... That... That's a good
27:04
part of it, the oral history. But but what what also got to
27:07
happen is you got to share your perspective, your worldview,
27:12
your interpretation of it.
27:13
Right? The data when you own it, you get to interpret it, which
27:17
is so powerful. And and like you said, all of a sudden, when you
27:21
showed these maps, maybe there was apprehension because in the
27:24
other people's worldview that weren't indigenous, they saw
27:27
maps as ownership, exclusivity.
27:31
Nathan Carlson: Right.
27:31
Donavan Cameron: You know? But but for indigenous peoples or
27:33
especially for myself, you know, and So to and Cree, we... The
27:38
the land is kind of... It's a sacred responsibility. There's
27:40
such a a big deeper understanding there in terms of
27:44
ownership and responsibility to the land.
27:47
Like, ours is more circular where we have a relationship
27:50
instead of, like, this hierarchy and establishment. Like, a lot
27:54
of our relationship to the land, we consider it like a gift.
27:56
Right? There's old stories of creation and laws from creation
28:00
that were given to us and language and our relationship to
28:03
the animals and the land, the air, and the water. And it's our
28:06
responsibility, a, to to manage that so we can benefit and
28:09
survive.
28:10
Right? But but it's not something we can own or give
28:12
away in the sense. We... I loved open source because open source
28:16
was indigenous to me. I...
28:19
My first foray into GIS was very proprietary. You know, I love
28:22
commercial software. I love it all. It works amazing. I...
28:25
I'll I'll use any tool. I'm not... I wouldn't argue against
28:28
anything. But somewhere along the journey, when it came to
28:31
technology, I learned about this thing called open source. The
28:35
software was freely available so I could download it.
28:37
It was free for me to modify. I could just make changes to it.
28:41
And it was free for me to distribute, whether I wanted to,
28:44
like, distribute it commercially or just make... Contribute my
28:48
changes back. This was amazing because that concept alone
28:52
really resonates with First Nations people.
28:54
And if it doesn't, it really needs to. Because Mhmm. The way
28:57
I explain it, it might make a lot more sense about how we, as
29:01
a people, are open source. Our cultural knowledge, our our
29:05
relationship with the land is is a collective right, you know,
29:09
collective knowledge. And and how we evolve with that is is
29:13
amazing.
29:14
So just to give you a traditional example, think of an
29:18
arrowhead. Right? If I take a little rock, you know, a black
29:22
rock of some kind, it's it's unrefined. It's just a chunk of
29:26
rock. But let's say me and you are in in a tribe somewhere, and
29:29
and I begin to sit there and I start to chip away at it.
29:31
Right? And I give it an edge. I'm like, well, this is all I
29:35
can do. It's the best I can do. It's my technological
29:37
capability.
29:38
It's my own understanding. But then you're like, hey, give me
29:41
that. You know what? I give you that rock, and you you chip away
29:44
at it somewhere and you make it better. And other people start
29:48
to do this.
29:49
And by the time that Arrowhead gets back to me, it is such a
29:52
refined piece of technology that we have all created, we all own.
29:56
We can all collect it. We can modify it. We can distribute it.
29:59
And we all own it.
30:00
There's no individual ownership to it. Right? That's TIFF.
30:04
That's open source. So it was good to see that that our old
30:09
cultural ways could see be reflected in modern modern
30:13
technology through these collective uses of technology.
30:16
And I was like, that is such an indigenous thing that we've been
30:18
doing since time immemorial through our language, through
30:21
the laws, through our innovations, through through
30:24
through our stewardship, our technology. Yeah. And we could
30:28
adopt this seamlessly without conflict. That's really a good
30:33
strong starting point of being able to own the data is to give
30:36
that worldview and to share that and and to and to open up
30:39
discussion. Because if discussions were only one-sided,
30:43
they were very unbalanced.
30:45
You know, you have to have those multiple perspectives so people
30:47
can learn to respect each other, right, and understand each other
30:50
and then have true discussions and dialogue. So it was it was
30:53
neat to see how much barriers it broke down and and also new
30:57
challenges that are presented, right, as these stories got
31:00
told. And then truth telling happened. Right? So it's really
31:04
neat to see, yeah, the oral history capturing because it
31:07
allows the nation to integrate a new tool.
31:09
Right? A tool that allows them to take control over cultural...
31:13
Their cultural heritage and also their cultural continuity. You
31:17
know? Because because these datasets actually store, you
31:20
know, story map, putting...
31:21
Attaching language to places, pairing elders with youth and
31:27
looking at different storytelling there, different
31:30
land use activities, or or looking at how you can do
31:34
predictive analysis. Like, just... It... It's amazing what
31:37
what this really opens the doors for for different communities
31:40
and nations.
31:42
Nathan Carlson: And you mentioned... You said truth.
31:44
Like, you you mentioned truth and reconciliation. I love that
31:48
term. You know, it...
31:49
I I don't know if it was the first time ever it was used in
31:52
in South Africa, you know, for the Truth and Reconciliation
31:55
Commission. How are you using that term? What kind of problems
32:00
are you solving?
32:02
Donavan Cameron: Yeah. It's a very great question. It's
32:04
been... You know, the the TRC process, you know, the truth and
32:07
reconciliation commission process did happen in Canada.
32:10
Right?
32:10
And they're very much mirrored, but what came out of South
32:13
Africa and and those types of commissions as well. And the one
32:17
in Canada was targeted to deal with the the historical wrongs
32:21
against indigenous peoples, specifically residential schools
32:25
and different cultural genocide practices, right, that were
32:29
experienced by the peoples here. So through that, there was a lot
32:33
of truth telling. Right? And and then came the the hard part, the
32:36
healing, the reconciliation process, and and that's kinda
32:39
where we're at today.
32:40
And so a lot of the mapping really, it it can help that
32:45
process in terms of reintegrating people with their
32:48
territories. Because when you look at the stories they were
32:52
telling, the reason it happened, it was because it was to pull
32:55
them from their lands, to alienate them from their
32:57
languages, their stories, their connection, and take them away
33:00
from from their lands, and to leave them on reserves. And we
33:04
all know the story there or some don't, but it's it's it's
33:07
another... Maybe another story to tell. Right?
33:09
But with reconciliation and maps, by telling them... Let
33:12
their... Tell their stories on their territories, they could
33:15
really reestablish their connection there, reestablish
33:18
connections, and and open up other opportunities. Right?
33:22
Generational trauma can start to begin healed.
33:25
So when we... I'll give you an example there. Like Yeah. A lot
33:29
of times we we will map a berry site. And I think, that's that's
33:34
okay.
33:34
That's just a berry site. Right? You know, it's just a... It's
33:37
somewhere on the slope, maybe huckleberries. But when you
33:41
start to learn the context of some of these sites, they didn't
33:45
just go there to pick berries.
33:47
These were places and times used to share less certain lessons,
33:52
certain stories, and to help people progress through their
33:55
lives through different stages, others through young, through
33:58
teenager, up to adult today. So it was very important that these
34:02
were more or less anchor points that indicated strong cultural
34:06
connections. They would sing songs. They'd conduct ceremonies
34:11
through all these sites. So there's more to it than just a
34:14
bury site or just a Right.
34:15
Stick tent or however you... They could be described. The
34:18
context in these was really empowering. And that's one of
34:22
the reconciliation pieces that I was really proud of to to see
34:25
see nations put into place through... Especially through
34:27
GIS and mapping.
34:29
Nathan Carlson: Well, so with those stories, are you able to,
34:33
like, encode those stories in these GIS and TIFF files?
34:39
Donavan Cameron: Absolutely. So there's there's kind of been a
34:42
standard that's been adopted for oral history mapping. There's a
34:46
book out there by a gentleman named Terry Tobias called Living
34:49
Proof. And it's kind of like the documented style or method that
34:54
people have started to follow when it comes to oral history
34:57
mapping. And to keep it short, it it kinda teaches you about
35:00
something called a data diamond.
35:02
That's who, what, where, when. And those are the four data
35:05
points, right, that you would capture in an oral history
35:08
interview. So who was it? When was the activity? What did they
35:12
do?
35:13
And and some why now... Or how. This context piece is where all
35:18
the interesting stuff gets captured. And... But with with
35:22
KISS, they have this crazy ability to tag.
35:27
And these tags and this metadata that you can record in the tips
35:32
lets you put a lot of that data right in there and make it
35:35
machine readable. So from the oral history, from the mouth to
35:39
the document to the scan to the TIFF, and you can start to
35:42
record what was said into the TIFF even if you had to. Because
35:47
you can record different lines of metadata that could be coded
35:50
for these interviews as you standardize them as they came
35:53
out of this living proof methodology. Right? Because if
35:56
you had a methodology that lets you follow this data triangle,
36:00
those four coding elements, that's very simple to follow,
36:03
and you can implement that in a TIFF, for example.
36:05
As you start to handle those TIFFs, the machine can read it
36:08
and see that it's standardized. And you could have all these
36:11
processes in place for data quality, data assurance, and and
36:14
different tools. Also, the the TIFF itself can reference in its
36:19
metadata different documents, or it can reference even different
36:22
standards of the file format itself. So if it has geospatial
36:28
data attached to it, and it's not just x and y, so Latin long,
36:31
but what if it's zed data, like height, and and different
36:35
terrain data? Right?
36:36
It can do that as well. And you'll have different metadata
36:39
to handle that for different quality standards and different
36:41
uses as well. So you can continue to say this data is
36:46
intended for this use just by encoding metadata and by having
36:50
standards. So so it was very... It's very, again, very flexible
36:54
and powerful in that regard as well.
36:57
Nathan Carlson: That's all kinds of awesome.
37:00
Donavan Cameron: TIF is wild. You can store basically any type
37:04
of data. It can be nominal, ordinal, interval, relational,
37:09
and all these different types. Right? And it could be discrete,
37:13
continuous, and different fields of study can use it.
37:16
Right? Like, I... It's not just the points, lines, and polygons
37:20
and the and the scan documents. It's actually the... Maybe some
37:24
type of analysis that you've done.
37:26
It could be derived products or or other things. That... That's
37:31
where the work really got interesting is how we we could
37:33
interpret oral history. Right? So so the TIFF was always the
37:36
launch pad.
37:37
Mhmm. And if you didn't really have a good TIFF setup, then it
37:40
was kinda hard to do work. And I I realized early on that if I
37:43
could really integrate a lot of early work, heavy lifting, or do
37:47
data consistency somehow by tagging it in a TIFF so that it
37:51
could be consistently read in the future, then it was... It's
37:55
it's really awesome. And like I said, even today, fifteen,
37:57
twenty, twenty years later, some of those TIFFs that I've made
38:00
are still in the wild.
38:01
Right? It's still being used, and I've seen some of those maps
38:03
on the screen. So it's it's awesome to see.
38:05
Nathan Carlson: Oh, wow. And you're like, hey. I made that.
38:07
Donavan Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Right there. And that's new.
38:10
Like I said, we we don't get to put our names on things, but we
38:13
just get to see where it goes.
38:35
Hans Buetow: We've talked on this show about the pillars of
38:38
the internet. That's systems, it's formats, it's programs that
38:43
were created by humans to solve a problem and that have become
38:47
something that a bunch of the modern internet rests on top of.
38:53
So as everything gets, you know, duct taped together around them,
38:57
these pillars keep doing what they do. They provide stability,
39:02
functionality, and I think ultimately creativity to people
39:07
that goes well beyond their original intent. I mentioned
39:13
this idea of pillars to Nathan.
39:16
Clearly, clearly by the resonance that this had Yeah.
39:20
With the number of people, the number of different people using
39:23
it for different things, this is one of those fundaments. And it
39:28
has existed unchanged for thirty years at this point.
39:34
Nathan Carlson: Yeah. Yeah.
39:36
Hans Buetow: And it still works Yeah. Better than anything else.
39:41
Nathan Carlson: Yep. In in a lot of cases, better than anything
39:43
else. Yep.
39:45
Well... And so
39:46
Hans Buetow: if I if I was gonna give your uncle accolades, I
39:50
would say that he helped build one of the pillars of the
39:53
Internet. And he helped make it stable enough that it could just
39:59
hold its part of the Internet up.
40:05
Nathan Carlson: Yeah. And there was a question to his family at
40:10
one of the episodes... One of the early episodes was with his
40:13
daughters and ex wife. And I was like, did... Do you think he
40:19
understood how impactful just this one project he had?
40:24
He worked on many other things. But this one project that he
40:28
worked on, how wide it has affected people's lives and
40:32
careers and cyst computer systems, all these different
40:36
things. And I think I think the answer was partially. I think at
40:41
some point, he did know that it was used commonly, but I don't
40:46
know that he knew to this extent. Yeah.
40:50
I don't know that he ever knew that.
40:53
Hans Buetow: As of publishing this Mhmm. Your uncle is
40:57
mentioned in the Wikipedia page for the TIFF.
41:00
Nathan Carlson: Okay. Great.
41:02
Hans Buetow: But he's only briefly mentioned.
41:05
Nathan Carlson: Yeah. That's okay. Yeah.
41:08
Hans Buetow: Do you feel like you have achieved what you
41:12
wanted, which is to get enough information and verifiable
41:15
information and enough context to be able to adjust to the
41:18
Wikipedia page. Like, could you create a Steven Carlson
41:24
Wikipedia page?
41:25
Nathan Carlson: Oh, yeah. That's a bad idea.
41:27
Hans Buetow: To me, it's glaring that it has no hyperlink. You
41:31
cannot
41:31
Nathan Carlson: click Steven through Carlson? Sure.
41:33
Hans Buetow: To Steven Carlson and learn a little bit about the
41:35
man himself because because I feel like the contribution that
41:41
you have helped me understand that he has made to so many
41:47
things just by inventing this format, it deserves that some
41:54
people know about it.
41:56
Nathan Carlson: I would love that. Yep. That'd be great.
42:00
Hans Buetow: You heard the man. Our duty is clear. If you are
42:05
someone who can help Nathan give his uncle Steven Carlson, mister
42:10
TIFF, Wikipedia recognition that we think he deserves. Reach out
42:14
to us. We are gonna put you in touch with Nathan.
42:17
And please, if you're inclined to just go out there and take
42:22
care of it, please don't just go build the page. Let's all work
42:25
with Nathan and his family to let them do the honors with
42:30
mister Tif. Because I find it very special that Nathan has
42:36
turned this project into an oral history series on his podcast,
42:41
Inquisitive Pontification. I think there's something poetic
42:46
about Nathan archiving the efforts of someone who made a
42:52
part of digital archiving possible. I think Stephen will
42:58
be really proud of what Nathan has been doing, to bring all of
43:03
us a little bit closer to the TIFF.
43:10
Nathan, thank you so much for sharing your uncle with us.
43:15
Yeah. And and helping us understand so much more. This is
43:20
like the such geeky stuff to just feel like the world is an
43:25
okay place.
43:26
Nathan Carlson: Yeah. That's something that I really liked
43:31
and like you saying, the internet is a big monster And,
43:38
you know, you asking why did I pick Reddit? Well, you know,
43:41
their little motto was like the heart of the Internet. Yeah. And
43:44
I kind of agree with that.
43:46
Because it's like, that's where I go if I want help. Done
43:54
different projects, solving some, you know, nerdy thing or
43:57
whatever. But but, you know, some of the some of the
44:01
conversations, not all, but some are positive, encouraging,
44:07
helpful, compassionate, and that was Steve. He was compassionate,
44:11
empathetic, and that, you know, that encourages me not just for
44:18
my career as a counselor of just like, I'm gonna make... Give you
44:22
the time and space to tell me what's going on and maybe I can
44:25
help you out a little bit.
44:26
But also just in my personal life Yeah. Of like, how can I be
44:28
be a better son, a better brother, a better friend, and
44:36
have patience for people, encourage people, have
44:39
compassion for people? And so Steve, the TIFF file, Reddit,
44:46
all these different technologies and communities, that's... It
44:54
helps me to try to be a better person. Yeah.
44:57
I guess.
45:04
Hans Buetow: Thank you Nathan Carlson. Thank you for being
45:06
generous with your tape, your story, and your uncle. If you're
45:11
listening you can go find and listen to the whole mister Tiff
45:15
series of interviews that Nathan did on his podcast, Inquisitive
45:19
Pontification. We are gonna put a link to it in the show notes,
45:22
I highly recommend. There are so many more details about Steven,
45:27
stories about his life.
45:29
Nathan interviews coworkers, and you can hear the family talking.
45:34
It's a real pleasure to dive into the world of Nathan's show.
45:39
And if you're someone who uses a TIFF or celebrates the TIFF,
45:44
send us your thoughts on that too. We would love to be able to
45:47
share with the Carlson family more of the affection for this
45:51
pillar of the Internet.
46:26
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We're
46:29
gonna be back here in the main feed on or around Thursday,
46:33
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